Blood for Blood
by Singe Allerdyce
Summary: Another lousy day in a lousy city... Expect explicit content in later chapters
1. Scarlett

**Disclaimer**

_I do not own Sin City. It sucks, but I find a way to live with it… mainly by owning Scarlett, Merrick and Lola. They are mine… Apart from Lola, who I stole fair and square from a close friend. Don't sue me… or you'll end up as a pez dispenser _

Sunrise.

The dead tell me this is supposed to signify hope… that there should be a sense of optimism about the new day. The blind must see things differently, I suppose.

The sky is the colour of blood, the world beneath an animal, and I am condemned to watch the movements of its parasites. I am no ghost, and this place is in ruins.

The blood is spreading now, coursing through streets which are little more than extended drains. Someday it will all foam up around them… Someday this whole open sewer will scab over and the vermin will look up with dying eyes. They'll all lift up their heads – the sluts, and the cops; the perverts and the paedos, politicians and hitmen and slender, doe-eyed dancing girls with uzis hidden in those skimpy cowgirl outfits – all the assorted effluence of society, locked in that terrible unity, will lift up their heads and scream.

And I'll look down, like a kid frying ants with a magnifying glass. And as they all drown I'll watch, and I'll laugh.

Don't feel too sorry for them. True, they aren't 'wicked', for that implies a conscious choice to do evil, which is more than these placid, mute imbeciles are capable of. No, these aren't evil-doers, but nevertheless they are condemned to rot in Hades' furnace. They're born into hell, live through it, and, because they never try to change anything, it's where they end up. As for me, I doubt the pearly gates are going to swing open so I can take my place with the saints and martyrs, smiling down on the drug lords who go to confession, and enveloping the blackened souls of mass murderers in blinding light because they mumbled the rosary a few times or spouted a couple 'o garbled "Hail Mary's" (No surprise, then, that everyone in Basin City has their cute little crucifix – religion's great for washing the blood of your hands).

Ah, sorry, I digress… This debased city can't help but make one muse on higher things – stay grounded here and it'll drive you insane – but the distraction has its downsides. I've got to be sharper than the familiar blade tucked in the waistband of these hate-worn dark-denim jeans, which cling like a second skin in the dull damp heat.

Dawn finds me, cheap room in the Old Town, debating whether to change for my victim. This tank top (black, of course, and skin-tight) is heavy with the dull salt of the natural born killer, the rich tang of some anonymous bar or club – thick with tobacco and malt – and the sweeter scent of the face I've just taken off. The mask that pays the bills (I hate her, hate even more lying dormant within her beneath the stale, liquor-tainted breath and bulk that's my bread and butter, but what else can a clever girl do around here?). Her dark lashes and ruby red lips swirl down the drain as I reclaim my battered flesh. My dark black, short (almost androgynous) hair and bloodshot eyes, the red a startling contrast against vibrant green irises and ivory skin. Today all my body wants to do is crawl back beneath those sin-soaked sheets and sleep, and I for one don't blame it, but the predator in me needs to hunt again, to glut herself on the hot, dark blood of her own kind… I resolve to stay as I am for the moment, then treat myself to something new with the dirty money from that other woman's victims and my own enemies, so both it and I come out shiny clean, newborn, ready to be spoiled by the next poor fool who believes they can possess us.

Dull throb in my skull (currently at least 6 sizes too big) from one headache, metallic hum and sharper pulse from another – mommy dearest, on the cell (accursed machine! I hate being so contactable, so tangible to other people) – am I well (in body, at least), when am I coming home (never), I don't sound good (true, honey, your daughter's an evil bitch) and should get more sleep (no arguments on that account). In the end I hang up, bored silly with enquiries and admonitions, and smash the damn thing before it rings again. The folks back home will hate that – what will poor helpless little Scarlett do now, should she stray into trouble (as fear not but she shall, if only to break the interminable tedium)? I laugh in spite of myself – she'd no doubt call for help on her attacker's exquisitely small and ridiculously expensive mobile phone, but only after ringing his wife so she can tell the kids daddy isn't coming back.

I don't know if this one has a wife. I don't even know who he is yet, this maggot set to squirm on my glinting hook. In Kadie's I muse, using the dark surface of my breakfast (double rum, neat, and like fire trickling down my throat) as a scrying glass – smoky ambrosia, tell me; dark hair, or blonde? Blue eyes? Or will I choose him another way – what he drinks, whether I like his coat, if his top shirt button is undone or his collar turned up?

Will I decide not to bother? Unthinkable, poor darling (who ever you are), don't you know that killing is one of the few passions left to me? I drink deep of another, as a third sets the door swinging; flame haired, and dressed like a charcoal sketch. Sweet peach of a woman, my Merrick, and perfect antidote to the dead meat of my twilight hours. Meat whose deadened eyes can't help but track her, and I grin to myself because I know she cares none for their kind.

"Before we start" – voice like whisky, smoky and mellow – "I got you these". Merrick fishes in her bag (grey, leather, impractically small) and pulls out a medical canister, shining tobacco-stained beige. The label flaunts a long word with too many consonants to pronounce, typed in unexceptional block capitals, inside small white pills and the scent of living death. She's got them off an ex – her perk for not telling Mr. Psychiatrist his wife (Claire, I think) doesn't like men – and wants me to try them. I smile when she says she's worried about my "antisocial tendencies", and promise to take them because I don't want her to be scared, can't stand to see tears in those coffee-cream orbs. Hers is an odd beauty, but compelling and arresting nonetheless, and I'm aching to get away from these great lumbering Neanderthals so we can be ourselves.

Only we're never ourselves. I don't know who she is, outside of here, why she feels the need to embrace this city when she's probably got a perfect life somewhere else. And she doesn't even know my real name, thinks I'm Cassie, that I work as a waitress. Still, I guess it doesn't really matter – we all need our dreams, right? That's why girls like the one who lives in my head, rules the night-shift, are never out of business – because the sad apes who shuffle through our doorways want to believe they can be loved, that the problem lies with whoever they're pretending we are, that they could have her if they wanted… Sure. Dreams are what keep people like us going.

What's next I miss, attention commandeered by a fake-pearl and fishnet flapper girl whose hazy attempt to fly off the stage leaves her sprawled on the floorboards at the feet of a less than appreciative crowd. Poor silly little rich kid, her breath a riot of grossly exotic apple-flavoured shit that brats like her favour, thinking themselves gloriously debauched for sinking syrupy shots in the back of daddy's limo. I don't know how Lola (Barbed-wire princess from Boston) ended up working the day shift (pickings notoriously slim) at Kadie's, have no intention of finding out, and would laugh if I was more drunk or she less pathetic.


	2. Lola

Fuck. How the hell did I end up here?

I don't mean 'here', now, sprawled on lousy floorboards in a lousy joint, being slowly choked by my lousy fake pearls. No, I mean what the fucking hell am I doing in this shit hole city?

Shellie helps me to my feet, steadies me on my stupid heels… Times like these, I wish I found her less irritating, but truth is she and every other person in this room – this whole goddam city, even – could go to hell and I wouldn't bat a powdered, spidery fake-lashed eyelid, or raise a blood red and perfectly manicured fingernail to help. _I need a drink…_

"Sure, sugah… go home and fix yourself a coffee, 'kay? Strong as hell and black as sin, yeah?"

Damn… gotta stop externalising. But it's true; I'm dying for a bottle of something cheap and sugary, a sharp blade and a dark, quiet place to hide. And although going home is off the cards, Shellie's offer is too fucking enticing.

Later on, lousy apartment, blinds drawn down to keep the half-light that passes for day out and my personal brand of darkness in. Things have stopped looking so hazy; bad sign. Means I'll start remembering who I am… and there's nowhere near enough alcohol in this whole goddam flat for me to crawl back into my dreamworld. No clean blades either – all blunt; all rust brown and clogged with scarlet teardrops. Nothing, then, to stop this deluge of meaningless sensation, nothing to deaden the pain.

Organs move like a squirm of eels, sledgehammer pounds away behind vacuum-sealed eyes, and everything becomes too real – the colours too bright to look at, the smoothest, softest texture like nails drawn slowly down my spine… The reflections in green glass are mesmerising, and I grasp madly at a girl who shares my face… She explodes into a million fragments and I stumble blindly, desperate to gather them all; to cup them in my hands and shield the frightened little girls who stare back. They embrace me, their love oozing hot, and wet, entwining my wrists. Waves of sticky crimson, the angel's fond caress.

Goodbye lousy city. Goodbye Kadie's, with your razorblade lights and lonely leering losers baying for ripe flesh. Goodbye Lola… it's been hell knowing you.


	3. Mimis

**Merrick: **_I catch my reflection in Cassie's glass, the scent of her dark lover rising electric. Some time between leaving Kadie's and stumbling into her arms and Mimi's bed (cheap, convenient, and free of social niceties) hours ceased to matter – now, two bottles past empty mini-bar, she's a dead weight at my side, the soft pink flush of her cheeks and deeper stain on her lips making her seem more alive than the devilish ice-queen who dominates her waking hours… My angel. I give her trinkets, which she pockets appreciatively enough, and rum, which I think she likes better. In return she takes away everything else – the dull grind of 9-5 and the nothingness that cradles it; mortgage, deadlines, all melting away, eclipsed by that one moment of bliss when I'm no one but who she wants and she is everything I need. The perfect woman, the Goddess with the universe in the palm of her hand, creation and destruction in her kiss. _

_The slightest movement of her soft, childish chest beneath that man's shirt (crimson, oversized, and unbuttoned to beneath the navel) is entrancing, her dog-tags glinting, clinking with each rise and fall, slender fingers wrapped in the chain they unconsciously play with… My own trace the tiny batwings at the base of her spine – no need to see them to know each line, only the agonizing desire to be closer. Funny, how I know every inch of her surface, and yet I've no idea what's written on those tags, why she never takes them off – last shard of something fractured? Love token, maybe? And yet, she's so young. Has she known anyone but me?_

_I don't need to know… it's the drink talking. Who cares who she is outside these walls, outside my bed, as long as she plays the game for me now, as long as she's mine for just a moment?_

_And yet…_

**Scarlett: **Cold fingers on my neck. Darkness recedes at the speed of light. Shit. How long have you been asleep, stupid bitch? Get up.

On your feet, Scarlett. No matter how the room sways, stay standing. Trust that the floor will stay there. Fool, you let yourself get distracted. Drink made you slow. Blind. Stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid!

Catch sight of Merrick, somewhere in the haze, breathing hard for all the wrong reasons… What the hell are you doing, girl? Stop waving that knife in her face!

_She sheathes it, eventually. Drains the glass like its water, a trick she repeats before slumping on a chair opposite the bed – our bed - , a third measure in her unnaturally steady hand. _"I could've killed you, y'know"

_Me, I'm shaking, can barely hear above my own heartbeat. Somehow I laugh. Harsh, nervous, barely above a whisper. My mouth's dry and the words nearly choke me – "You're just a kid, Cassie. You can't kill anyone"_

"What the hell do you know?" _On her feet again, tearing great chunks out of a carpet still warm from our other exercise. I try to track her erratic progress as she careers from wall to wall like a fat, half-dazed fly caught in a midsummer glass house, but she's too fast and I'm far too drunk…_

"_Okay, calm down". The third rum is gone. She pours another. "I don't think that's a good idea"_

"Why should I give a damn? Christ, Merrick" – more fire in my throat, to match that lacing my every word – "You're starting to sound like my mother"

Only not. Because darling mommy dearest obviously doesn't care what I do so long as I marry a rich city type. You sure screwed that up for me, didn't you? Bitch. You're intoxicating. You're inebriating. You're distract…

_Dull crash. Red spurt. Guttural, mewling scream…_

… but not from me – mute, mesmerised by the delicate interplay of hot blood and shards which glitter like ice. Shards I'm picking out, much to her disgust.

"_You should let a doctor see to that…you don't know what you're doing." It sounds stupid before the words have left my lips, her ruthless precision and calculated skill betraying an unnerving familiarity with the gruesome. She doesn't stop, or look up. Doesn't flinch once._

Not 'til the last bit's out can I pause, take in my surroundings. Gail told me once how anything left in a cut like this could travel round the body and kill you, sometimes weeks later. Sounds like a pretty crap way to die, so lucky for me this wound is neat.

"Okay, ow!" _Cassie slides to her knees, eyes fixed on her ragged palm._

_I kneel next to her, slip an arm around her shoulders, thinking how weird it is that she's so cold and still when I'm shaking yet again. Jesus, babe, who are you? What have you seen – oh God, what have you done? – to make you so detached, so unmovable? "Are you all right?"_

"I'll live… fucking kills though"

"_Hey…" I slide closer, my warm and fear-sticky hand brushing her stone-smooth skin so we both shiver. "Less of the killing"_

My lips on hers, on mine. I break away, look her in the eye, impish – a game I know too well. "Does that mean more of the…"

_I nod. _She grins._ The curtain falls…_


End file.
